Unsettled Spirits (11 page)

Harold, who always seemed to know what I was thinking, said, "Don't worry. It's an olive tapenade. It's good smushed on the rolls and butter."

"I'd never force anyone to eat caviar," said Emmaline with a grimace. "Can't stand the stuff myself."

"I'm like that with oysters," said Del. "Oysters are practically a staple in New Orleans." He shuddered delicately.

I'd never eaten an oyster, either, but I'd never admit it to this trio of privileged people. After surreptitiously watching Harold deal with a roll, butter and some olive tapenade, I did the same thing. "Oh, this tastes like those olives we had in Egypt and Turkey, Harold!" Those olives were nothing like their tame cousins we usually eat in the USA.

"Indeed," said Harold with a blissful grin on his face.

I dipped into my soup, front to back with my spoon as my mother had taught me, and took a sip. "This is delicious, too," I declared. Then I felt a little silly.

"It's one of my favorites," said Emmaline after taking a sip of her own soup. "It's green pea soup."

"Hmm. It's not like my aunt's split-pea soup. That's much heavier and has ham in it."

"Yes. This is made with fresh green peas. Chef Armand, the head chef here, made it up and won't let go of the recipe. He'd probably endure torture and still not reveal it."

"Sounds silly to me," said Harold.

"I don't know," I said after taking another bite of delicious, sweet, fresh-tasting green-pea soup. "It's his bread and butter. So to speak. If everybody knew how to make it, it wouldn't be special any longer."

"Precisely," said Emmaline. "I don't begrudge him his recipe, but I made him promise to leave a copy for me in his will."

"Good idea," I said, laughing.

"It goes really well with the olive tapenade," I said after trying a bite of roll, butter and tapenade along with a sip of soup.

"Well-chosen meal, Emmaline," said Harold. "Depending, of course, on what you serve us next."

We didn't have to wait long. A second after Del, who ate more slowly than the rest of us, probably because of his southern-gentleman upbringing, put his spoon on the plate beside his soup and sighed, a host of waiters swarmed in, swept the soup and bread-and-butter plates off the table, and set before each of us a plate upon which sat a wide goblet filled with a thick red sauce and with whole cooked shrimp draped over the rim of the goblet, tail ends facing us and front ends dipping into the sauce.

"Oooh," breathed Harold, his hands clamped over his heart. "Shrimp cocktail. I knew I liked you for a good reason, Emmaline."

"For my food, you mean?" asked Emmaline with a laugh.

"Yes!" Harold picked up one of the lemon quarters residing on his plate next to his goblet, squeezed lemon juice on top of the red stuff, and then he proceeded to pick up a shrimp tail with his fingers and dip it into the sauce. "Heaven," he said with something of a moan after he'd chewed and swallowed.

What the heck. I'd never had shrimp cocktail either, so I followed Harold's example, squeezed a quarter of a lemon on top of what I found out later was the cocktail sauce, and dunked in a shrimp. Harold was right. If it wasn't precisely heaven, it came in a close second place.

"Another of my favorites," said Emmaline emulating Harold and me (and Del, too, by this time). "But this recipe is easy to find in almost any cooking book."

"Is it really?" My head lifted, and my gaze landed on Emmaline. Perhaps I'd have to pay another visit to the library sooner than I'd anticipated, if any cooking book had this recipe in it. Although I wasn't sure where Aunt Vi would find shrimps. Perhaps Jurgensen's, the rich-folks grocery store in Pasadena would have them, but they'd also probably cost a lot. Well, I'd just have to think about how to get my hands on some shrimps.

After the shrimp cocktail had been downed by one and all, I was full. But that didn't stop the industrious team of waiters. They swept in and out again, and another team brought in steaming plates of chicken a la king. It was good. Not as good as Aunt Vi's, but I didn't say so.

Harold did. "I think Daisy's aunt makes a flakier crust than this on her chicken a la king," he said with a judicious expression on his face after he swallowed his first bite.

Emmaline laughed again. "She probably does. Chef Armand is good with soup, but his pastry chef should probably take lessons from your aunt, Daisy."

"I don't know," said I, feeling a trifle embarrassed. "I think it's delicious."

"It is, indeed," said Del.

He was forever trying to undo perceived damage done by his more outspoken lover, Harold. But everyone who mattered already knew Harold and never held the things he said against him. At least I don't think they did.

After we'd demolished the chicken a la king and a delicious pudding bristling with coconut and pineapple, we all sat back in our chairs, stuffed.

"That was wonderful. Thank you, Emmaline."

"You're more than welcome, Daisy. And I do hope you won't think I've invited you here under false pretenses, but I'm going to ask an enormous favor of you."

Oh, dear. I didn't like the sound of that. I said, "You are?" Trepidation was clear to hear in my voice.

"I am." Emmaline put her elbows on the table, folded her hands, and stared at me. "I would be ever so grateful if you'd poke into Mrs. Franbold's death. The family can't get anything out of the doctors or the police, and they
really
need to know how she died, for their own peace of mind. The poor woman's demise has put a hold on every aspect of their lives, particularly since Charles Franbold suspects something dire proceeding from the Underhill connection."

"He thinks Barrett Underhill had something to do with Mrs. Franbold's death?" I said, incredulous. "That would definitely put a damper on things, I reckon."

"Well, he hasn't directly blamed Barrett yet, but it's clear he thinks either Barrett or Mr. Underhill had something to do with Mrs. Franbold's demise, even if some sort of unintentional action on their part caused the woman's death."

"But what could either of them have done?"

"Underhill owns a fertilizer company south of town, Daisy," said Emmaline. "Fertilizer plants are fairly dripping with poisons, especially if they also produce pesticides, which Underhill does."

"They are? I didn't know that!"

"Pesticides are poisons, aren't they?" said Harold, as if he honestly wanted to know and wasn't making fun of me.

"Yes, they are. And I do believe lots of fertilizers use cyanide to one extent or another. I mean, the Underhill plant is basically a chemical plant. We're not talking about Irish farmers cutting peat to grow their gardens in," said Emmaline.

"Goodness," I muttered, wondering what she thought I could do to determine if an Underhill had done in Mrs. Franbold. "I'm not... Well, I'm not sure what I can do."

"Detective Rotondo would pitch a fit if you snooped into another one of his cases," said Harold with a wicked grin.

I allowed my chin to drop, feeling awful. I wanted to help Emmaline and the Franbolds, but if I did, Sam would be on me like that red paint the KKK had sloshed on Mrs. Pinkerton's gatehouse.

"It's because Emmaline hates you," said Harold, again being wicked.

"I do not! I know Daisy to be a kindhearted, resourceful woman. For heaven's sake, she's taken care of her family for years. That takes resourcefulness and intelligence. The fact that she's maintained her humanity in the face of so much inhumanity is something to take pride in."

"Thanks," I muttered. "I think."

"Can you just snoop a little bit?" Emmaline said in a wheedling tone. "I don't expect you to play private investigator or anything."

I heaved a heartfelt sigh. "Well, I guess I can ask questions of people, but if Sam gets wind of my poking around, he really will pitch a fit."

Ignoring the last part of my sentence, Emmaline smiled and said, "Oh,
thank
you, Daisy."

Nuts.

Chapter 9

My snoopery began that very evening, when Sam joined my family for dinner. I was still full from lunch, so I didn't do proper service to Vi's admirable dinner of salmon croquettes served with a cream sauce. I wasn't a particular fan of croquettes—I'd been forced to teach a bunch of immigrant women how to fix them a couple of years prior, and I still hadn't fully recovered from the ordeal—but Vi's were delicious. Still, I only ate about three-quarters of one, all my asparagus, and dawdled over my dessert, which was a baked apple with cream.

"You aren't eating much, Daisy," said Vi, noticing my poor appetite and disapproving of it.

"I'm sorry, Vi. It's all delicious, but Harold took me to lunch at the Castleton today, and I'm still not hungry yet."

"Exalted places you dine in," grumbled Sam, digging into his third salmon croquette.

"Not my fault," I said. "I just happen to have exalted friends. Heck, Emmaline Castleton was the one hosting—or should that be hostessing—?"

"What difference does it make?" Sam growled.

"None, I guess." I sighed. "But she's a friend of Glenda Daltry, who's Vivian Daltry's daughter, and—"

"Who are the Daltrys?" asked Ma. Fair question.

"Vivian Daltry is Mrs. Franbold's daughter. If you'd been able to come to Mrs. Franbold's funeral, you'd have met her. She's a nice lady. I didn't meet Glenda, her daughter, but I'm sure she's nice, too. Anyway, Emmaline seems to like her. They're friends."

"What about them?" asked Sam, his voice not inviting frivolity, darn it.

"Well, you know that Charles Franbold thinks someone poisoned his mother on purpose, right?"

Sam set his fork and knife on his plate. They crossed each other, kind of like swords. I considered this a bad sign. He said, "Here we go again," in a voice that could have etched glass.

"We do not!" I cried, already feeling abused. "Emmaline just asked if you knew yet if Mrs. Franbold was poisoned. Or not."

"What difference does it make to her?"

"None, except that's she's friends with Glenda, and Glenda is engaged to marry Barrett Underhill, and he works at his father's chemical plant. Well, I guess it's a fertilizer plant, and Glenda is worried that someone will blame Barrett for Mrs. Franbold's death because chemical plants and fertilizer plants use a lot of poisons in their products."

Everyone at the table had stopped eating and was staring at me by the time I finished my explanation. I understood. It sounded lame to me, too. I lifted my shoulders and my hands in an "It's not my fault gesture." Didn't work.

"You are
not
going to get involved in another investigation, Daisy Majesty," said Sam, laying down the law. He always did that, and I generally ignored him.

"Do they know what did in Mrs. Franbold yet?" asked Pa, being relevant.

"Oh, I do hope she wasn't really poisoned," said Ma.

"Me, too," said I.

"Indeed," said Vi.

"The cause of Mrs. Franbold's death is still under investigation," said Sam formally. "Her death is being scrutinized by the Pasadena Police Department in cooperation with a couple of doctors. We don't need your help, Daisy."

"I know you don't, but if you ever figure out what killed her, will you please let me know? Just so I can tell Emmaline? So she can tell Glenda, and Barrett can stop worrying?"

"Why is he worrying that he'll be blamed if he's innocent?" asked my mother, who almost always used her common sense.

"I don't know," I admitted. "Sounds kind of fishy, doesn't it?"

"Yes." It was Sam who answered. "And I do believe I'll have to pay a call on Mr. Barrett Underhill."

"Oh, Lord, please don't tell him I sent you!"

"You didn't send me," said Sam. "I'm investigating a woman's death. We don't divulge who gives us our leads."

"Is it a lead?" I asked in a weak voice.

"Don't know yet." Sam reclaimed his silverware and dug into his dinner again.

That went well, didn't it? I'm being sarcastic, in case you couldn't tell.

The next day, Saturday, I drove Vi to work at the Pinkertons' mansion. Well, I also drove Ma to her job at the Hotel Marengo, but that was just up the street a ways. After I dropped Vi off, I toddled down to the Pasadena Public Library, hoping this was one of the two Saturdays per month during which Miss Petrie was on duty. It wasn't. That meant I was on my own.